Sea ice around Nova Scotia is so thick, Canadian sealers will have trouble meeting Quebec’s growing demand for grey seal meat. “We’ve never had trouble meeting demand, but for 2018, we’ll have to see,” Réjean Vigneau, president of the Intra-Quebec Sealers Association, told CBC News. CBC reports that crews usually haul in 2,000 seals during the winter season, but two failed expeditions in the Gulf of Saint Lawrence since January turned up nothing. Vigneau called it “catastrophic” for the working men of the Magdalen Islands who depend on seal hunting for their livelihood, and to the environment. This year, thick...

Libertarians hate coercion. To the extent that the anarcho-capitalist right justifies its worldview in moral terms, it is through an appeal to the obscenity of brute force. The problem with the welfare state, according to many libertarians, is not that it redistributes resources from rich to poor but that it accomplishes this by threatening wealthy tax dodgers with imprisonment. Individual liberty is sacrosanct, and just social policies are those that do not violate a person’s will through a threat of state aggression. The logical flaws of this “nonaggression principle” are myriad. But most spring from the libertarian’s insistence on applying...

PRINCE GEORGE COUNTY, Va. -- A driver is facing charges after a Virginia Department of Transportation (VDOT) contractor was struck and killed while setting up a work zone on I-95 in Prince George County Saturday morning.Virginia State Police Sgt. Keeli L. Hill said the crash happened at 11:15 a.m. on southbound I-95 nearly three miles north of Route 602.Hill said 27-year-old Samantha C. Hughes, of Wilmington, North Carolina, was traveling southbound when she looked down and took her eyes off the road.That is when 25-year-old Dustin Michael Warden, of Carson, Virginia, was struck while he was out of his vehicle...

Due to a combination of prudence and morbid curiosity, a great deal of scholarly research (and journalism) about climate change has focused on the worst of all possible worlds. For scientists running climate-economic models, that nightmare scenario has a concrete definition: In 2011, such researchers established four baseline scenarios for the future of greenhouse gas emissions (ranging from the benign to the catastrophic) for the sake of facilitating comparable studies. The most fearsome — and widely cited — of these baselines, known as “RCP8.5,” imagined a year 2100 in which an overpopulated, technologically underdeveloped humanity is digging up and burning...

The government has ordered Oxfam to hand over files on charity staff who paid for sex in earthquake-torn Haiti. The demand follows an investigation by The Times that revealed Oxfam covered up the use of prostitutes by senior aid workers. Matt Hancock, the culture secretary who is responsible for charity regulation, said: “These allegations are deeply shocking and Oxfam must now provide the Charity Commission with all the evidence they hold of events that happened in Haiti as a matter of urgency. “The reported historic behaviour of senior aid workers is abhorrent and completely unacceptable. Charities must ensure that they...

Tuvalu – the Pacific island group often cited by climate alarmists as the nation most immediately at risk from rising sea levels caused by ‘global warming’ – is not sinking after all. In fact it’s getting bigger, scientists now admit. A University of Auckland study examined changes in the geography of Tuvalu’s nine atolls and 101 reef islands between 1971 and 2014, using aerial photographs and satellite imagery. It found eight of the atolls and almost three-quarters of the islands grew during the study period, lifting Tuvalu’s total land area by 2.9 percent, even though sea levels in the country...

On Wednesday the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee released a majority staff report titled “The Clinton Email Scandal And The FBI’s Investigation Of It.” The committee also released thousands of text messages between two agents and lovebirds Peter Strzok and Lisa Page that shed light on the criminal intent of deep state players to avoid prosecution of Hillary Clinton and to block and destroy a Trump presidency.(snip) Peter Strzok was the Chief of the Counterespionage Section during the FBI’s investigation into Hillary Clinton’s use of a personal email server. He also hated Donald Trump along with his lover...

Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe (D) announced a deal Wednesday that will add 10 more miles of express lanes to the Interstate 95 corridor, expanding the system of high-occupancy toll (HOT) lanes to Fredericksburg by 2022. As part of the agreement, the private company building the lanes will give the state $277 million upfront to cover costs of a bridge over the Rappahannock River and other improvements along the corridor, Virginia transportation officials said. The deal essentially moves forward a 10-mile extension from Garrisonville Road (Route 610) in Stafford County to Route 17 in the Fredericksburg area. It also builds on...

Three officers have been shot and the man who pulled the trigger is dead, authorities said. According to Channel 2 Action News, two Henry County sheriff’s deputies and one Locust Grove police officer were taken to area hospitals. The GBI is investigating the shooting, Channel 2 reported. Stay with The Atlanta Journal-Constitution for live updates. 1:12 p.m.: The status of the wounded officers is unknown. 1:11 p.m.: “Our thoughts and prayers are with the Henry Co Sheriff's deputies and Locust Grove officer who were shot this morning in Henry County,” the Gwinnett County Police Department said in a tweet. “We...

It seems weary commuters will have to wait four more months before they can start using the Sarah Mildred Long Bridge between Portsmouth and Kittery, Maine. The lift-span bridge will now be open to traffic in mid-May, eight months after cars were supposed to start using it to cross the Piscataqua River, according to an updated construction schedule from Cianbro, the Pittsfield-based construction company hired by the state of Maine to build the bridge. Cianbro spokesman Alan Grover did not return a interview request Tuesday to explain why bridge construction has been delayed. Cianbro started construction on the $160 million...

Donald Trump tweeted that Britain's National Health Service is "broke and not working." All too true: expenses have forced 40% of walk-in health centers to close, all elective surgery in January to be cancelled, and primary care has been decimated, it's not surprising that problems have surfaced. It is just as predictable that the usual call for "more money" echoes around the UK. All this is the result of economic laws that have been completely ignored since the days of Aneurin Bevan, the father of the UK NHS. The first is the Law of Rationing. In short, "Everything is...

I was attached to a local wichita ks hardee's wifi and recieved the following message - "This website is blocked by your network operator. If you feel you have received this message in error, please contact your network operator with the following information: URL: http://www.freerepublic.com/tag/*/index Category: Philosophy and Political Advocacy Server: 209.157.64.200:80" Several other conservative friendly sites are accessable and the DU website.. Are any of you able to visit a hardees and report back your experience.

President Trump is the leader of America's conservative party. Yet not even his allies would describe him as a conservative in the tradition of Robert Taft, Russell Kirk or William F. Buckley. In the primaries of 2016, all his rivals claimed the mantle of Mr. Conservative, Ronald Reagan. Yet Trump captured the party's heart. Who, then, and what is Donald Trump? In a Federalist essay, "Trump Isn't a Conservative -- And That's a Good Thing," Frank Cannon comes close to the mark. Trump, he writes, "would more accurately be described as a 'radical anti-progressive'" who is "at war with...

Why is former Vice President Joe Biden campaigning for an unknown Democrat in a single open Florida House seat that means nothing to state governance? And why are gobs of money from Democratic donors around the nation pouring in to this special election covering North Sarasota? Because Democrats have been losing a lot lately — the historic tax reform success, roaring economy, their fiasco of a performance at the State of the Union, apparent collusion between Democrats and Russia and now Obama being outed in a bald-faced lie on discussing the Clinton email investigation with the FBI. Further, GOP poll...

The pilot of a shot down Russian Aerospace Force Su-25SM attack aircraft, when cornered by insurgents last week, reportedly resorted to his personal weapons and was not taken alive. According to releases from the Russian Ministry of Defense, Major Roman Filipov, 33, was shot down by a shoulder-launched missile near the town of Maarrat al-Nu’man on Feb. 3 while on a routine patrol. Ejecting in an area controlled by Al-Nusra — a jihadist group labeled as terrorists by both the U.S. and Russia — Filipov continued his fight once on the ground. In a statement from Col. Gen. Sergei...

In 2010, the Obama administration granted approval to Russia’s atomic agency Rosatom to acquire a majority stake in Uranium One. The deal was controversial because the Canadian mining company at the time controlled 20 percent of all uranium mining capacity in the United States.Given the national security implications, the deal required approval by the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS), which included the State Department, then headed by Hillary Clinton.Russia had well announced its plans to corner the global uranium market as a way to exert political control over other countries. As early as 2006 Russia announced...

Todd Howe, the prosecution’s star witness against Joseph Percoco, was arrested Thursday night after admitting in court that he likely had violated his cooperation deal with the feds, a source told The Post. Howe “was remanded back to custody for violating the terms of his bail,” said Nicholas Biase with the Manhattan US Attorney’s Office. Asked if Howe — who is being held at the Metropolitan Correctional Center in Lower Manhattan — will still testify Monday in the corruption trial, the US Attorney’s Office declined comment. Under cross-examination Thursday, the longtime associate of Gov. Cuomo admitted he lied to his...

Several recently released polls show a resurgence of Republican popularity among voters, as measured by President Trump’s approval ratings and the generic Congressional ballot. The Real Clear Politics Average of Polls, for instance, currently shows the generic Congressional ballot advantage for Democrats has dipped to 6.2 percent, the lowest it has been since May 30 of last year, and down seven points from the 13-point advantage they had as recently as a month and a half ago. President Trump’s job approval rating has increased to 42.3 percent in the Real Clear Politics Average of Polls, his highest since May 13...

Jesse Farrar, formerly of Deadspin and Vice, tweeted that professors should instead "hold the conservative students heads under water until they stop breathing." Kirk responded: “I'm sure he is joking, but imagine if conservatives made a joke like that against liberals?” “I am not joking,” Farrar wrote back, later deleting the tweet. When contacted about the tweet, Deadspin's editor wrote that Farrar was joking and said the organization "supports his stance of trolling white supremacist-minded" groups. Kirk, the founder of Turning Point USA, said on "Fox & Friends" he was "stunned" at the comment by Farrar. "They disagree with us...